The efficacy of teaching psychology students exposure and response prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder

The aim of the study was to investigate whether inexperienced student therapists could successfully learn exposure and response prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Twenty out of 21 outpatients completed treatment as delivered by ten psychology students. A total of 60 hours group supervision and approximately 30 hours with individual supervision was given to the students over the course of three semesters. Large effect sizes were observed for measures of symptoms and depression. Sixty-two percent ( N = 13) of the intent to treat group achieved clinical significant change and 81% no longer met the diagnosis criteria ( N = 17). The treatment effects observed at the 6 month follow-up period were promising. The results are encouraging for training students in evidence based treatment for specific disorders.     

ANONYMITY,STRENGTH OF ATTITUDE,AND THE INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION POLLS

Subjects were given questionnaires asking their responses to six statements on public issues. On some of the issues subjects were highly committed to their own views, while other issues were selected for the subjects' lack of knowledge and commitment. Some subjects were asked to respond anonymously, and others were led to believe that their responses would be made public. Each questionnaire contained a bogus distribution of responses from students at the subjects’ university. Each statement of interest was supported by the bogus majority in one questionnaire form and rejected by it in the other form. Several types of conformity were considered. For the low-commitment issues, subjects were influenced in the direction of the bogus consensus. For the high-commitment issues, the bogus consensus had no significant effect. Implications for understanding the effect of polls on public opinion are discussed.     

Spoken word recognition by eye

Spoken word recognition is thought to be achieved via competition in the mental lexicon between perceptually similar word forms. A review of the development and initial behavioral validations of computational models of visual spoken word recognition is presented, followed by a report of new empirical evidence. Specifically, a replication and extension of Mattys, Bernstein & Auer's (2002) study was conducted with 20 deaf participants who varied widely in speechreading ability. Participants visually identified isolated spoken words. Accuracy of visual spoken word recognition was influenced by the number of visually similar words in the lexicon and by the frequency of occurrence of the stimulus words. The results are consistent with the common view held within auditory word recognition that this task is accomplished via a process of activation and competition in which frequently occurring units are favored. Finally, future directions for visual spoken word recognition are discussed.